Burning Sea

He had the face of an angel. Yet I saw crypts when I looked at him, and I heard the beat of kettledrums. I saw torchlit fields where I had never been, heard vague incantations, felt the heat of raging fire on my face. And they didn't come out of him, these visions. Rather I drew them out on my own. 

The anguish was almost palpable in the screeching of the violin. He slashed the strings of the violin with wild, violent strokes and it seemed as if  it was screaming in pain. He ripped into the song, he tore the notes out of the violin and each note was translucent and throbbing. His eyes were closed and he seemed to lean his whole body into the music, to press his soul like an ear to the instrument. And yet, above the tormented screeches of the wooden thing, there existed a kind of beauty. 

It is the kind of beauty you see in the red of the blood. Sometimes, you see a gash on a dying man's throat and you are mesmerised by the rich, velvety blood flowing out of the hideous wound. You secretly think how similar the colour of blood is to the colour of a deliciously red goblet of burgundy. 

I see it in his eyes. I could see that he was sorely tempted by the dancing flames and I watch their ethereal movements from the reflection in his eyes. He longed for their feisty tongue to lick him into dust and ashes. 

Sometimes, it was as if when I looked into his eyes I was standing alone on the edge of the world... on a windswept ocean beach. There was nothing but the soft roar of the waves and the soft, white sand beneath our feet. When I look into his eyes now, all I see is an ocean of raging fire, ready to consume anything and leave no trace of the person behind.

I guess this is the good part of it, being burnt to nothing; this way, you are saved from the inevitable humiliation of a horrible, decaying corpse. And I wonder if this is what everything, to him is about.